


No Brother of Mine

by brook456



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Light Angst, Stanuary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-20 10:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9486320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brook456/pseuds/brook456
Summary: Stan tried his best to bring his family together--but did he really succeed?





	

**Author's Note:**

> A quick oneshot I did for Stanuary, week 4, with the prompt "Family." Turned into angst, because why not? Set the night of NWHS, after opening the portal.
> 
> ((I need to stop dragging Ford he's not as bad as I always portray him but alas))

_Everything I do, I do for this family._

He said it, and he meant it when he said it: the furthest thing from a lie he could muster, a truth that held more weight to it than he could at the time, reveal. A truth—or so he thought. Would he have done it had he thought it a lie? Would he have worked so long and so hard had he not wholly believed it? Though perhaps he had an inkling, even then, that he was wrong. He had felt a certain sorrow in watching the children play on that fateful day, saw the first few leaves in the aspens starting to grow gold, saw summer ending. It was change, he thought then, that he was afraid of, change and the purposelessness that came when you fulfilled a goal that you had chased for so long. That and nothing more—he was willing to brave change, willing to go to the ends of the earth and back for this: for family. But standing here, now, with an ache in his jaw, standing inside a house that somehow felt emptier than before, emptier now with four of them than it had been with three, that he realized all he had done was tear what little family he had apart.

He should have known. He should have known that the man he brought back tonight was not the man he had lost thirty years ago—or worse, should have known that he hadn’t changed at all. There was something terrible in the way Ford had stood there, black against the glow of the portal with his eyes burning with a resolve both fearsome and strange. But perhaps that was just his flair for the dramatic, his unparalleled love for himself, his desire to impress. The facade of an arrogant fool—how, how could Stan have forgotten it? the arrogance, the pride…how could he have expected the man to thank him?—and yet for nothing but a pretense of greatness Stan had felt his heart skip a beat, seeing that man there in that room amidst the stars and the crackle of blue flame.

The feeling had passed though, the awe and, though he hardly dared to admit it, the fear. It had passed for him at least—he could see Dipper backing against the wall out of the corner of his eye—but that was besides the point. _He_ was no longer afraid. _He_ was happy for just a moment thought for a second that he had really done it, thought that he had finally brought his family together. But that too, didn’t last. He glimpsed the brother he had dreamed of for only a second, before having the wind knocked out of him by the brother he actually had.

Arrogant, prideful, ungrateful. That was Ford. How could Stan have expected anything else? How could he have thought that the man would do anything other than disparage everything he had worked for, belittle the years he had spent and call him a fool for daring to save him? And maybe he was right about that. Maybe Stan was a fool. After all, he had believed that everything would be all right, that they would laugh and cry and hug and be a family—nothing more than the saccharine dreams of an idiot. A _family_ —all he had done was ruin what little he had. See Dipper, and the mistrust that had flashed in his eyes, the fear with which he had looked at the man he had called his grunkle. See Mabel, having to chose between her brother and him, all tears and confusion and hurt. See Ford, see his anger and his words and his promise that the Shack would be no more. At least before tonight Stan had had the hope he could get his brother back. At least before tonight he had thought his brother was family.

So what would happen now? He stood there, in the hallway, watching Ford retreat back into the basement as if he had never even arrived—but alas, the damage had already been done, hadn't it? All Stan could do was try to salvage what he had left, try to keep the kids together, try to protect them from the rift that he had torn between them. Try to protect them from the man who had once been his brother.

Because he was finally being honest when he said it, when he told the man to keep away.

Because he was finally being honest when he told him that the kids were the only family he had left.


End file.
